A light?

I met with Dr. Hulstyn today and was very impressed. He took about 30 minutes to examine me, which i believe is the world record for an orthopedic surgeon appointment. We went very thoroughly through my history, and he still did his own physical exam despite having the MRI's in front of him.

One of the things that i mentioned to him was that my pain is very lateral and posterior (back of the outside of the knee) and my injury is anterior. So basically it doesn't make sense. He agreed, and seems to agree with me about it being more IT band and Hamstring. He gave me the yellow light to proceed forward, but with caution. I told him i would go very slowly and just keep reassessing. Its still kind of a crappy answer, but at the same time he doesn't seem to think I will be unable to run again, so that is a plus.

After the appointment I continued to run parts of our conversation through my head. The more I think about things, the more i don't believe that i'm being limited by this osteochondral injury. I decided to google "posterior lateral knee pain" and got a slew of hits on these types of injuries. Apparently they are rare, but usually include the biceps femoris (hamstring tendon) and the popliteus muscle. I have had chronic hamstring tendon pain in that knee for years. Its very tight, and at the same time very weak. Its been one of my primary targets in the past year. It seems that in a small population, this becomes a major problem, but what caught my eye is that it said, "This can happen by falling on flexed knees, and will often cause pain with running and climbing and descending stairs." This pretty much sums up the past 10 months for me. Fell on flexed knees, can't run, can't squat and can't do stairs. It was unreal how much it made me think of my own situation.

That being said, I was sitting in my car, drinking a coffee before my next patient, and decided to try to palpate the area a little. I found that i have some incredibly irritated tissue near the hamstring tendon as well as the gastroc head. Turns out that you can also herniate the gastroc lateral head quite easily ,and its painful to compression. Anyway, I did about 3 minutes of loosening on that area and was relieved of my symptoms for a brief while. All of this has me thinking that i'm onto something. In the meantime, i'm going to try to start building back up. I read that a cortisone shot to the gastroc head can completely relieve symptoms. Just a thought for the future.

I got home and decided to test things out on flat ground. I walked up my hill, then ran an incredibly slow and cautious 5 minutes. It felt awkward and glorious all at the same time. I then came home and did my hips and hamstrings. I had already done core, hips and chest this morning, so i didn't want to overdo it. After a little bit more soft tissue to the area, I feel decent. The trick now is to ramp up while not worsening symptoms. I'm cautiously optimistic at the moment.